A few months ago, Gonzalo Gimeno, CEO of a bespoke travel agency called Elefant Travel, received a call from a well-known businessman. We don’t know his name, but we do know the details of the request: to plan a route to travel around the world in five years, traveling one month a year. All the stops had to be based on the curriculum his children were studying at school. After even contacting an educator, Gimeno fulfilled the request. The budget was $1.2 million per month, not including flights, since the client had his own plane. “In the end, something surreal happened,” the travel agent recounts. “The businessman is afraid of flying. So they never went.”

Spending over a million dollars isn’t as complicated as it seems. There are very creative ways to do it, and it would seem there are increasingly more. The ultra-wealthy, that tiny fraction of the world’s population that holds a large portion of the wealth, are changing their spending habits. While spending on luxury goods has declined, or at least stagnated after the post-pandemic rebound, the demand for experiences has skyrocketed. These can range from a simple trip to anything imaginable: visiting the underwater wreckage of the Titanic, watching an NBA game next to Rihanna, or having a vermouth with royalty.

According to data cited by The Economist, Knight Frank’s luxury goods investment index rose 70% between 2015 and 2023, driven by wines, watches, art, and prime real estate. Since then, it has fallen 6%, with declines of 20% in fine Bordeaux wines and 6% in private jets. It’s not that the ultra-wealthy have less money — the number of billionaires continues to grow — but rather that material luxury has lost some of its symbolic scarcity. Democratized by resale and amplified by social media, it no longer guarantees status as it once did.

Meanwhile, an index compiled by The Economist shows that ultra-luxury services — hotels, events, and fine dining — have become 90% more expensive since 2019, solidifying the shift toward services over goods. It’s no longer about having, but about doing. These conclusions are echoed in other reports, such as the one prepared in 2024 by Bain & Company in collaboration with Altagamma, and the State of Luxury 2025 report by McKinsey & Company. Customers are showing a growing interest in the luxury of experiences over products.

“Luxury is exclusivity,” says Martha Lucía Pereira, a real estate agent in Madrid’s Salamanca district. Few people understand the logic of a wealthy person’s mind as well as she does. “It all depends on how you sell it and how you present it. The most expensive properties depreciate when they’re overexposed.” It’s a rule she’s empirically verified in her sector, where demand continues to soar. “If a five-million-euro apartment appears on [Spanish real estate website] Idealista, my clients no longer want it. A luxury property, when it’s too visible, ceases to be a good investment. It loses its value.”

This logic aligns with what has happened over the last year at major fashion shows. Big brands, concerned about declining sales, have reduced their use of influencers in an effort to regain the aura of exclusivity lost in recent years. Furthermore, the growth of the secondhand and rental markets has made certain luxury goods — from haute couture to high-end car rentals — seem less scarce, thus diminishing some of their symbolic appeal.

Spanish chef Dabiz Muñoz, causing some controversy, said that his restaurant DiverXO, with its €450 ($525) menu, wasn’t for the wealthy. The crux of the matter is that almost anyone, with some effort, could afford it; unlike, for example, a mansion or a Ferrari. However, just like material possessions, experiences can also be completely inaccessible. It’s no longer enough to travel to faraway places or stay in an ultra-luxury hotel. The experience has to be unique and unrepeatable.

Gimeno’s company specializes in providing these kinds of services. To do so, he and his team make scouting trips to learn, for example, where to see the best lowland gorillas in the Congo, or how to join the National Geographic team in Botswana. Before designing each itinerary, they spend several hours with clients developing a personalized profile. The average price exceeds €50,000 ($58,400). “It’s like a tailor. We don’t have a product. Your trip doesn’t exist: we have to create it,” he summarizes.

This level of access allows them to offer experiences beyond the reach of conventional tourism: renting a temple in Petra for a private dinner, visiting the king’s private car collection in Jordan, organizing an exclusive desert camp with a private chef and bathroom, or arriving by camel at sunset amid bonfires, tea under the stars, and falconry at dawn. “Twenty years ago, luxury travel meant flying business class and staying in a brand-name hotel like the Four Seasons. The farther away, the better. Today, the important thing is to create memories,” Gimeno says.

A canoe among icebergs

This sophistication is also evident in other agencies specializing in tailor-made trips, such as Mundo Explora, directed by Vania Ujevic. One of the destinations they offer is Antarctica, a restricted and logistically complex territory that, in just a few years, has come to offer an increasingly wide range of experiences. “Now there are canoeing trips among icebergs, overnight camping trips, diving in polar waters, ski treks to the geographic South Pole, specific programs to observe emperor penguin colonies in remote areas, high-altitude mountain climbs, and cruises with photography workshops led by experts,” she explains.

For Ujevic, in just two decades the sector has gone from selling destinations to selling stories. “Years ago, it was enough to say: ‘I’m going to Thailand.’ That’s no longer a differentiator. Today the question is: what are you going to do there?” The key, according to the businesswoman, lies in creating experiences that can be shared: living with local communities, sharing their food, rafting, observing animals in their natural habitat, accessing places off the beaten tourist track. “You can see that evolution: from simply seeing the place to experiencing unique things.”

Like Gimeno, she has plenty of anecdotes about extravagant requests. Once, a group of friends wanted to go to an island similar to the one featured on the popular TV show Survivor. On another occasion, a client asked her to find a way for him to spend New Year’s Eve in various different cities, taking advantage of the time difference between countries. This trip, like the one for the businessman who wanted to travel around the world, never materialized. He himself realized there were perhaps better ways to spend the money.

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